The Tomb of the Gods (Matt Drake 4) (7 page)

“I know very little.” The old man’s eyes flicked nervously toward the pictures that hung on his walls, perhaps fearing repercussions.

“No one will ever know you told us,” Mai assured him quietly.

“I know only a few things I overheard and what Wells would spout off about in moments of anger or insobriety. It’s all on here.” Black reached under the big, puffed-out arms of his chair and removed a strip of tape. A small, black device fell into his hand, which he held out to Mai.

“A Dictaphone?”

“He recorded everything on there. Never wrote a thing down. My old friend had his failings, Miss Kitano, but he never forgot a thing and he was a gifted commander.”

“Before we listen to that,” Drake spoke up, “please tell us what you know, Mr. Black.”

“This Shadow Elite—it’s what they call themselves—are made up of individuals from a group of old families. A very old group that date back to when rough and rugged men were first making their fortunes. Their wealth is ancient. It goes beyond heritage, beyond royalty. It’s the
original
wealth of our world. And thus, it can never be tainted.”

“Go on.” Mai prompted him gently.

“That’s most of what I know. Wells opened up one night about the origin of the families. Their leader is called the
Norseman.
He’s God, so to speak. The supreme ruler.”

Drake shook his head. “With the third tomb, the eight pieces being
relocated,
and now this, I’m beginning to think we’re nowhere near done with the bones of Odin yet.”

Mai reached out and pressed the Dictaphone’s
play
button. Drake frowned to hear his old commander’s voice fill the empty room. It took him a few moments of readjustment.

“Above all I am a patriot. A servant of Britain. When Cayman first came to me, he convinced me that the Shadow Elite were, in fact, the ruling body of this world. Simply put – they gave every government its orders, including my own. So have I truly not become a greater patriot by serving them?
” There was a lengthy pause.
“A question for a more insightful mind than mine. But it later became clear to me that the Shadow Elite did not have the people’s interests at heart. What government does, I hear you ask? I would like to think—my own. I believe that every British man who becomes a politician starts out wanting to help his fellow man, no matter where he ends up.
” Another pause.

Alicia said, “How long has he been digging?”

Black shrugged. “Seven? Eight years? Wells became a changed man.” He shook his head regretfully. “Terribly changed.”

That was around the same time Alyson died. Drake did not miss Mai’s meaningful look.

“I decided, after the conclusion of the Doubledown operation, to delve a bit deeper into the motivations of my employers, and perhaps learn their intentions. Were they just men playing chess with civilian lives? Or did they have hidden, honorable aspirations?”

Mai paused the recording and again glanced at Drake. “Have you ever heard of Doubledown?”

Drake felt the icy trickle of unhappy memory crawl the length of his spine. “It was an operation I headed. My last. At first, we made excellent progress. The whole thing fit together perfectly and it seemed we were going to finish in record time. Then. . .” He shrugged. “It got shut down. No explanations. We were ready to move on this big guy.”

Drake thought back. “He owned some kind of mansion in Vienna. Then, Wells came in and told us we were done.
Pack your bags. First flight home.
Even
—take some time off.
Then, about a week later—” He sighed. “Alyson died.”

“Doubledown seems to have been some kind of catalyst,” Mai said. “For Wells and for you, though you didn’t know it at the time.”

She restarted the Dictaphone. Drake tried to block out the sound of the wind as it swept and scoured the dark garden paths and the scraping of trees at the windows. Wells’s ghostly tones filled the room.

“The Norseman is the key figure of the Shadow Elite, though obviously all six of them are principal figures. Still, I have no names, but I do have a possible location, and other more personal revelations that will not put me in a good light. But I cannot tell it all here. Even this is too public. There are files. Many files.”

The voice stopped. Drake and the others in the room all looked at each other.

“You old bastard,” Mai said vehemently. “Not like this.”

But then the voice spoke again.
“There’s a stash of old and new stuff at the secret SAS facility in Luxembourg. It’s in my archived file. I know because I put it there. I ask you not to judge me, Mai, no matter what you find. I remain, above all, a patriot, and I carried out what I judged to be the course of action that best served my government and my country.”

Drake let out a deep breath. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“Which bloody bit?” Alicia exploded, unable to keep her cool any longer. “Wells’s admission of guilt? The fact that all his papers are inside a friggin’ SAS base! Or his hint that there’s worse to come?
Fuck!”

“Exactly,” Drake said. “My friends in the regiment would do anything for me, but I can’t ask them to steal for me.”

“Of course,” Mai said without hesitation.

“So
we’re
going to have to do the stealing,” Drake went on. “If we want to know what Wells found.”

“He might have found the Shadow Elite,” Mai said, and Black nodded in agreement. “Six men who rule the world. And they’re connected to Wells, to Cayman, and to the tomb and the doomsday weapon. We can’t ignore them, Drake.”

“So you intend to infiltrate an SAS base, steal some documents, and then escape without being noticed?” Alicia hissed. “Are you serious? Those guys
invented
stealth.” She grunted. “I mean—
us guys.
”

Drake smiled. “But even the best of the best ain’t seen anything like us,” he said with conviction in his voice. “What was it Wells used to say?
Heroes never quit. They stay strong until the end.”

*****

The drive to Heathrow didn’t take long. Drake tried Hayden again, but didn’t expect to reach her. She was in the air, en route to Germany where the last and deadliest tomb of the gods had been located by both the good and the bad guys. Tomb three held all the vilest gods. The worst of their kind.

The race to reach it first was well and truly on.

“No luck,” Drake said and cut the call. He looked at Mai swiping away at her 3D smartphone. “A three a.m. flight, you say? That will get us in two hours after Hayden. Hopefully, she’ll wait.”

“She’ll wait.” Alicia echoed. “That girl has faith. And, naturally, she needs us.” A bounce of energy sent her blond curls flying.

Drake typed in another number. He wasn’t surprised when the man from Hereford answered on the first ring.

“Drake?”

“Hello, Sam. Thanks again for guarding the Blakes for me, mate. A debt like that—” He faltered.

“Never needs repaying between friends.” Sam finished for him. “You saved my life a hundred times. Now, what’s up?”

“How’re you fixed for a German op?”

There was a brief pause. “Not too well, mate. Of our people, I can get three for about two days. Four including me.”

“Then go now,” Drake told him. “Meet me in Singen, Germany, as soon as you can.”

Drake saw the bright lights of Heathrow swinging around to the left and ended the call. He raised an eyebrow at Mai. “I got four. How about you?”

“Two.” She half-smiled and then threw a glare toward the back seat. “How about you, Alicia? How many friends can you count on?”

Alicia let out a loud snore, as if asleep.

Mai snorted. “Thought so.”

CHAPTER NINE

Russell Cayman knew hardship. His junkie parents had abandoned him in a ditch when he was four. They were caught and tried, but that didn’t save Cayman from being shuttled from one cruel, uncaring foster family to the next. Having never known love, he would never know how to give it or recognize it.

Children of the “system” were always on the radar of the more clandestine sections of governmental agencies, and in particular, the ones who ended up demonstrating a brilliant skill-set in one area or another. The CIA moved in when he was fourteen, and with no real guardian and no family, Cayman was happy to accept their friendship. It was many years later that he understood it was to be a friendship with fangs, and with no way out.

Now, Cayman threw his keys onto the tiny table by the door and headed into his apartment. The place would have made a Spartan happy. There were no furnishings, no home comforts, just a chair to sit in, a bed to sleep on, a table to eat off, and a TV to keep up to date with the world news. But it gave him some peace. Here he was happiest.

Cayman possessed no social skills beyond what the agency had taught him. So now, stressed to the point where he wanted, needed, to kill, he walked into the kitchen and quickly began choosing pots and pans. He rummaged through the fridge and picked out a chicken breast, some Italian chorizo sausage, peppers, celery and green beans. Furiously, he began mixing up some meat stock whilst he fried an onion and added fresh garlic.

Slowly, the tension seeped away.

The mix of concentration, aromatic smells and simple exercise worked to drain the pressure from his body. Cooking was his only release, and then only when he was home because nowhere else felt the same.

As he chopped the peppers, the knife slipped, cutting a tiny chunk of flesh from his finger. He left it nestled amidst the peppers as he swept them into the big pan and let the blood drain into the mix. Time ceased to exist. Jambalaya was his masterpiece, the pinnacle of his long-practiced culinary skills.

After a while, Cayman laid out a knife and fork on the empty table, the noise echoing around the empty apartment as if to mock him. He sat down, carefully thinking about nothing, still dressed in the standard suit and tie, and ate with robotic, measured strokes.

Hayden and Gates had escaped his trap in L.A. Where would they turn up next? Their cohorts, Ben and Karin Blake, had fled the CIA building a mere twenty minutes before Cayman’s men arrived.

He stopped eating. The anxiety made him want to fling the meal to the floor. Made him want to stab the fork through the meat of his hand and suck at the blood and the torn flesh for solace, using the hand like a grotesque dummy. He’d done it before.

But the heady aroma invaded his senses again. He returned to the meal. He finished the bowl, stood up and walked over to the window. The neighborhood outside was busy, full of parents and children hurrying about their daily routines. Cayman had chosen to live amidst a bustling civilian population, though he didn’t know why. Was it the need to feel he was a part of something? Something real, as opposed to the shadowy cutthroat world he thrived in?

He watched the young mothers, familiar figures by now. The children. He was a monster in their midst, the Halloween ghoul come to life. But the government indulged his whim and let him live amongst them.

No, not the government. The people
behind
the government. They didn’t have a conscience. They didn’t care where he lived, so long as they got what they wanted. The American government, the top brass, had actually balked at the idea of allowing him the use of this location. . .but they’d been overruled.

The Shadow Elite. They were the towering silhouette behind the monster. The blackness at the heart of the gloom. A body of six men, Cayman knew, who played the world’s governments like puppets. Their interest, already piqued at the discovery of the spectacular tombs and preserved bones of so many legendary gods, had skyrocketed into the stratosphere when they learned of the doomsday device. The response had been immediate. First, it must not fall into the hands of anyone else, for that person might then be able to wield some influence over them, and second,
they
should be the ones to control it since they always had been, and always would be, the world’s governing body. It was an irony to them, Cayman knew, that they should possess the power of old gods, since they were the new gods. And the Norseman, their leader, was an unstoppable force. On a whim, he could start a war. On the toss of a coin, he could wipe out a village—anywhere in the world. Cayman had witnessed his power first-hand. The memories still gave him night terrors.

Cayman turned back to the emptiness of his home, as his cellphone began to chirp a standard ringtone.

“Cayman here.”

“This is Mackenzie, sir. I’m in charge of coordinating all the data we collect from tombs one and two that might relate to tomb three.”

“I know exactly who you are. What do you want?”

“It’s tomb three, sir. We have a location.”

Cayman was careful not to let his excitement show.
This was it!
The Shadow Elite would be, literally, ecstatic.

“Gather everyone.” He spoke the words slowly and succinctly. “Send them all to the location at once. Now—where is it?”

CHAPTER TEN

Drake’s flight landed at Zurich airport a little before six a.m. Swiss time. He’d already received coordinates in-flight from Hayden so, as soon as they passed through security control without a hiccup, they found a taxi rank and gave the driver a local address. Within twenty minutes, they turned off
Zurichstrasse
onto
Wisentalstrasse
and dropped off outside a gray, nondescript building with the initials IMI painted onto a very old, very shabby sign, which hung precariously over the front door.

Drake, Alicia and Mai eyed the area suspiciously as the taxi pulled away.

“An awful lot of flat ground,” Alicia said warily. “You sure about this, Drakey?”

“I didn’t choose it,” he said testily.

The door opened and Torsten Dahl stood there. The big Swede had a lopsided grin on his face.

“Aye up, it’s the mad Swede,” Drake said with warmth in his voice. “I remember that same stupid grin being on yer face when you stood on the edge of Odin’s tomb, staring down at his bones.”